D.B. Dowd is a professor of Art and American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He serves as the faculty director of Modern Graphic History Library. His blog contains the work and papers of illustrators and cartoonists, and prominently features American periodical illustration of the 20th century.
Dowd writes and lectures on the history of illustration, comics, and animation, and has completed the manuscript for a prehistory of drawing. In 2006, he co-edited Strips, Toons and Bluesies: Essays in Comics and Culture for Princeton Architectural Press. Dowd is also an advisor to the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.